In Seoul, I spent today sleeping off a lot of beer and bureaucracy. I planned to get things done here within a day or two, but that has stretched into three nights so far. I hope to leave for Kwangju tomorrow.
I landed in Seoul on Sunday morning. It took all my strength to lug my 50 kg of luggage about 10 blocks to the Hostel after getting off the bus. It’s just a first impression, but I like Seoul a lot. I’ve only seen a couple neighborhoods in Mapo-gu, which has a lot of Universities and nightlife.
If we can judge a place by its traffic laws, Seoul is definitely a wily beer-drinking drunk tank brawling cousin of Tokyo. Korea still has the somewhat lawless characteristic of a country recently liberated from a military dictatorship. Unlike Tokyo, the traffic laws here are generally the same as the laws of physics. If you run into something, you lose. Barring that, motorcycles are free to run through crowds of people in cross walks and sidewalks. Pedestrians feel free to cross a busy 6 lane street if they can beat the traffic. It’s not quite the easy lawlessness of Hanoi or Saigon, but it’s the same flavor. Gone are the paternalistic Japanese gentlemen waving batons and shouting about the dangers of crossing the street. Though the subways do have thick glass barriers which keep people from jumping onto the tracks to kill themselves: something that might be a good investment in Japan.
Yesterday I met up with the Fulbright people in the morning to receive my instructions. I was surprised at how much bureaucracy is involved in getting services as a foreigner. Without a foreigner’s ID card, I can’t buy a cell phone, use local ATMs or open a bank account. And until recently, you could not get a foreigner’s ID card as a Fulbright scholar (I suppose they are only for employees and university students).
In any case, the details of the bureaucracy are not interesting. Tomorrow I will search for my foreigner’s ID card, which should take over a week to process.
At Yonsei, I was able to meet up with Eunjung, my long lost capoeira diva friend. I also went to Severance Hospital at Yonsei to meet Dr. John Linton. He is an American doctor raised as a Korean by a missionary family in a Korean village. He seems to take a lot of pride in the idea of being more Korean than American. As is prerequisite for a Korean of his age, he is a staunch South Korean nationalist. As is expected of a man of his position, he is cantankerous and imposing. I enjoyed meeting him a lot.
I went straight to his clinic, and he spotted me as he was escorting some Korean gentlemen out of the clinic. After waiting for him to finish his business, he escorted me around his office with his arm around me and introduced me to all the nurses and staff. He has the comportment of a southern gentlemen mixed with the confidence of an accomplished Asian patriarch. I was reminded of the importance of the lessons that I learned through capoeira, interacting with and observing the mestres. Much can be observed about human nature by observing the way people act within the roda and within a group. I'm learning how important it is to calculate my words and actions at all times. If I can actually learn to do it well, that will help me out a lot.
Dr. Linton assigned one of his staff to help me out with finding housing and assigning me a volunteer position at the hospital. I told them I can return to Seoul in two months to participate here, after I spend two months in Kwangju at Kwangju Christian Hospital. I feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of opportunity I’m getting right off the bat. The experience I get here could possibly fulfill the requirements of volunteer hours that I need for medical school, and get me much more comfortable moving within a hospital. My MCAT and grades are all spoken for, so the next step is getting more experience and putting together the actual application.
I guess I will make a lot of mistakes here, as a foreigner in a country where I don’t speak the language or understand the customs. But in the end, it is those mistakes that carry the lessons. And the lessons are what I came here for.
I will sleep now. 2:30 AM in Seoul. Lot of business to take care of tomorrow.
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